Me and My Guy
by cagd
Summary: 13 year old Dawn and Hank Summers had a date for the local Scout council's Me and My Guy weekend campout at Camp Wa-Sha-She - too bad dad bailed at the last minute to be with his secretary instead. Much against his better judgement, Spike volunteers to go as her "big brother" just to get her to stop crying and has a run-in with the local native demons.
1. Chapter 1

"Why can't Xander…" Giles sounded exasperated overhead where Spike was quietly looting The Magic Box's basement storage area for things he could sell. "Dawn, these events are simply not my..."

Spike grinned, the ol' bore was fighting for his life while he, the Big Bad was robbin' him below of whatever would fit in a pocket… _and oh my, look at all the goodies!_ A pound of mandrake disappeared in a duster pocket, joining several packets of rare Indonesian incense and a bag of dried Amazon Rainforest frogs in assorted novelty colors. Other expensive items followed with practiced skill as Spike kept a vindictive ear on what was going on upstairs, long pale fingers automatically sorting through the merchandise as he listened, smirking.

"But I'll be too ooooooold next year to go to the Scout Council's annual Me and My Guy Valentine's dance – dad has a new baby so he can't be my date, I'll be left oooooouttttt!" Dawnie whined, "Anyway, Xander has to work!"

"Yeah, kid, keep up that high speed dental drill whine of yours long enough - he'll give in." Spike opened a bottle of ritual wine, some Wicca thing or other with a hand-painted artisanal label on it and quickly downed the contents – eh, cheap Concord grapes and aged in the delivery van at $50 per bottle, bit of a disappointment, really. He pointedly put the re-corked empty back on the rack, might as well have been a juice box he'd just slammed.

And, Hell, it's not like Dawnie's voice hadn't drilled him straight into some Scout gulag or other last Spring when she was 13, Camp Whatsit or Other…

The vampire paused over an assortment of crystals mounted in cheap pewter wand settings, Dawnie was really up to speed this morning. He sniggered at Giles's excuse, doesn't have a suit, does he? Ha! The Tweed Avenger has three, good ones, at the back of his closet. Spike knew, having one long, boring afternoon gone through the older man's closet after he'd first been chipped, heyyyyyy, _Saville Row!_ Spike deliberately left a used blood bag in the breast pocket of that one. It should be nice and ripe now… like a tampon receptacle in a public restroom at the beach on a hot day during a full moon. He pocketed a few of the better wands – newbies'd fall for these— ugly but profitable… "Yeah, Dawn, keep drillin', you'll get a date!" he mumbled around a mouthful of earth friendly ginseng and royal jelly lozenges at $10 an ounce.

The things were nasty, but the spite value made what they did to his breath worth it.

At this point Dawn's wheedling was almost in the range of a bat on the verge of tears.

"Keep pushin', keep pushin', Niblet… keep it up… Aaaaaaaand…. Presto, you win kid!"

"Oh, all right, " Giles's voice drifted down through the heat duct, "I'll be your date!"

The thuds upstairs were Dawn's victory dance, with Giles mumbling in counterpoint, "I do not know why I allow myself to be talked into these things!"

Pockets heavy with boodle, Spike stood grinning up at the ceiling in the middle of the darkened basement while rolling an unlit menthol thoughtfully between his fingers, "Giles, me old son, better you than me, it was my turn last time– _hope you have as much fun as I did!"_


	2. Chapter 2

At the time he'd given in to Dawnie's demands, Spike was still smarting from when Joyce had asked him with about six Girl Scouts, or whatever the Hell they were, giggling and blushing at him in her kitchen, to go buy a dozen eggs down the street from the 7-11.

Seems she'd forgotten to buy them earlier and tonight Dawnie's troop was baking cookies… would he please?

He'd pocketed the money, (Hello, EVIL!) and with carton in hand swaggered out of the manky little shop with its six different flavors of beef jerky and three different flavors of chewing tobacco as run by a morbidly obese pimply clerk of indeterminate gender with a pierced nose, a unicorn (It might have been a pterodactyl.) neck tattoo, and a greasy blue mullet. Halfway down the block, blue meanie cottoned to the fact that he/she/it'd been robbed of a dozen cojones and came jiggling after Spike, brandishing a Texas Tire Thumper.

A man is known by his enemies; this enemy, large wooden club or no, was embarrassing.

Spike continued sauntering with the clerk wheezing and cursing about fifteen feet behind him, scrump carefully tucked in one pocket of his duster.

It went from embarrassing to alarming when a cop slowed down his cruiser to ask the clerk what was the matter. Lights flashed, the siren blared— not in the mood for either a tasering or a thumping, Spike did a jackrabbit across somebody's front yard, vaulted two fences, kicked a pit bull that was laying in wait for somebody, anybody, to trespass, punted a toy poodle who had the same mindset in the next yard, dodged a wiener dog, balanced along a picket fence, startled a Wicca blessing her compost heap, and shot past Clem carrying a case of Bugles before he finally came out near the alley behind Joyce's house, cops and clerk shed and eggs unbroken.

Only to go up the back steps, through the back door, not a hair out of place, eggs ready to deliver, and slip on one of Dawnie's drawing pencils in front of everybody.

The eggs had not fared well.

The girls, the bon-bons he dared not touch, had giggled nonstop.

Dawnie shut herself in her room, hair dripping with egg, something she didn't let him forget for quite a while.

Joyce merely sighed and gone and got the eggs herself.

Leaving him alone with a pack of 12-14 year old girls.

It had not been pretty.

And now, this:

He'd come into the house after a long stroll through the nearby sewer in the hopes of snagging enough loose change to buy a drink or six at the Bronze only to find the Niblet crying on the couch, amidst a pile of sleeping bags, tin dishes, and bug spray.

Spike and his blanket should have done an about face right there and then, but noooooooo, he'd asked her what was wrong and where'd everybody go?

Seems her old man had promised to take her camping this weekend at the local Girl Scout reservation about ten miles out of town in the back arse end of nowhere.

And the bastard had backed out not less then ten minutes ago.

Would Spike take her? It was a Father/Daughter thing; everybody'd be there.

No, Spike was NOT going to take Dawnie's deadbeat dad's place in the "Me and My Guy Camping Retreat" as her big brother because the arsehole what spawned her couldn't be bothered to show even if he'd promised he would. "No. No. No. No! Not at all, I'm busy until 2022 washing my hair or whatever. No. N.O. And N.O. means NO!"

Dawnie'd looked up at him, eyes swollen and red.

Spike shifted in his Doc Martins, exasperated, "So, why me? And anyway, why can't soddin' Giles do it? Or Xander, for that matter? How 'bout Captain Cardboard? This is his bag, all goin' out in the bushes gettin' et by wolves, not mine!" (Dawnie'd giggled at that one.)

"Giles is busy, Xander has to work and mom already paid for it and we don't have that much money. Riley's got army stuff, and, and, dad just called and said he couldn't make it because his new wife wants to sail to Catalina this weekend!" Dawn ended with a howl.

Spike sat down across from her on the coffee table, bouncing one foot nervously; no, no, a thousand times no… and oh bloody Hell, what is it about the female species and tears on command?

Knowing he'd regret it, Spike handed Dawnie a box of tissues saying, "All right, I'll do it. I'll be your whatever it is I'm supposed to be. Just stop with the bloody waterworks and let me get my car and we'll soddin' go and set fire to things, put wild boar's heads on poles and dance 'round 'em naked, or whatever the Hell it is you tots do at these events. What's the worse thing that could happen?"


	3. Chapter 3

As to awfulness, it was a 3-way tossup between having to travel in broad daylight- check, dealing with a flat tire, in broad daylight- check, and listening to the same boy band compilation tape over and over again. Check.

Luckily Spike'd nicked a tinting kit from the local hardware store earlier, spending a long, boring afternoon with Clem providing the snacks, no, eating the snacks, while he got tangled up in the film, wasting half the roll before managing to more or less coat all the windows of the '59 DeSoto he paid to keep garaged – worth every damned penny – a lad never knew when he'd have to bug out. Daylight still itched and stung, but with welding goggles, he could manage the glare enough to keep on the right side of the road, even if the film had torn half the hair off of one arm when he got tangled in it sticky side up.

He'd had to remind a bored, fidgety Niblet to stop pulling at the bits that kept popping up and to stop scratching those damned peace signs, her initials, and those of her latest crush in the bloody stuff. The last thing Spike wanted was to have "Mrs. Dawn Timberlake" or whoever, burned onto his hands or face while he was trying to drive.

The flat added to the drama: five miles out on an unmarked dirt road that made the low slung suspension of the DeSoto swear to kill him if it ever caught him alone in a dark alley, a well-angled cactus spine caused a blow-out.

Bloody Hell, those had been expensive tires! He'd had to pay for them because believe me you mate, even the Big Bad couldn't manage to slip a tire under his duster like a soddin' pack a smokes or a dozen eggs! Swearing and smoking, both tobacco and himself whenever the tarp Dawnie had to hold over him leaked daylight no thanks to the dry desert wind as Spike wrestled with the jack (broken, shouldn't have let Dru hit him over the head with it that time in Reno). He'd finally shoved one hand under the body and lifted, juggling the tire iron and the lug nuts one-handed until he got the tire replaced with the flabby spare, which was buried under a pile of empty Dorito's bags, courtesy of Clem.

And of course, the tire pump had developed a leak.

At least Dawnie hadn't got bored and wandered off with the tarp, leaving him to dive under the car before he burst into flame, something Dru would have done. Instead, the Niblet giggled every time he swore, telling him she couldn't wait to use all the new words he was teaching her when she got home, and was that bacon she smelled?

Great. And of course Buffy would blame him if Dawn did and the Slayer'd trash his crypt because she could.

Still, the unscheduled stop allowed him to assassinate the half the boy bands in the western hemisphere. Well, their compilation tape, anyway. Bloody Hell, what was Joyce teachin' the kid? Why boy bands when there were the Sex Pistols, The Ramones, The Clash, even The Rolling Stones? Even fuckin' ELO would have been an improvement, maybe even Led Zep or Pink Floyd, but that batch of pretty wankers?

After three straight plays, he'd had enough, replacing the tape with a bootleg Ramones. Dawn made gagging noises the whole time, so to have some peace, Spike let her put her tape back into the car's beat up cassette player, the one he'd installed back in the 1980s after 8-tracks went out of style.

Change of plans! Spike deliberately yanked the cassette out of the player at an angle he'd learned by accident so that the thin dark brown ribbon of sonic torture squirted out of the cassette in beautiful brown arcs, like one of his meal's intestines cutting loose at death – "What are you doing?" Dawnie had screamed.

"Oi! The player was eatin' it, pet. It does that sometimes." Spike tossed the offending cassette out of the window before quickly rolling it shut.

The look on Dawnie's face plus her folded arms told him that she wasn't buying it.

Used to similar silent tantrums from Dru, Spike looped back to the small mom and pop gas station they'd passed earlier to buy her a peace offering.

And more gas, the DeSoto, out of it's usual paved element, was guzzling gas like he used to guzzle blood back in the bad, no good, old, days.

Alas, and huzzah, no boy band albums to be found. Plenny a' Johnny Cash, Boxcar Willy, and Willy Nelson, which both he and the Niblet drew the line at.

Boy band-less, Spike was still in trouble, plus they were now late for check-in.

Not that he cared, but he didn't feel like having to explain to Buffy or her mother why he was driving around bum-fuck nowhere in broad daylight with an underage girl in a over-aged car with the remains of a boy band compilation tape hanging in shreds from the radio antennae.

Dawn relented at last by requesting a pony.

Bloody Hell, even Dru hadn't asked for one of those, the hooves alone would destroy the upholstery and the mess…

Oh bloody relief, she just wanted a necklace with a googly-eyed Pepto-Bismol pink plastic pony on it, all bulbous and cute. Had something like that been born back in his day, they would have shot it on sight, and probably the mare that foaled it for fear that she'd make another one.

Spike paid for it and the gas in cash. No use the Niblet seeing him pocket the nasty thing and reporting to Buffy that he was stealing.

Tape forgotten, Dawn went back to chattering about boys.

Boys.

Boys.

Boys.

And more boys.

And pink.

And glitter nail polish

And what she was going to wear if some spotty faced git asked her out for the Harvest Dance.

And who was going with who.

And who broke up with who.

And glitter nail polish. Lots of glitter nail polish.

And what did Spike think of boy bands? His long obscene rant about what he'd do to any or all of them if he ever got his hands on them chip or no chip, earned him an outraged squeal accompanied by a shove, which made him nearly swerve into an oncoming farm truck.

The DeSoto got a new scrape on the driver's side door.

Spike put in a pirated Ramones cassette, cranking it up as loud as it would go, cigarette dangling from the corner of his mouth, goggles mirroring the darkening sundown desert through his DIY tinting job.

Dawnie ended up sulking in the back seat with her appalling pink pony and the camping gear for the rest of the trip, studying her glitter polished nails and claiming to be carsick.

The bottle under the front seat was still unopened, but it was tempting.


	4. Chapter 4

"Bloody Hell, what 'ave I got myself into? _Wha'a dump!_ "

Even after sundown, which was when they finally arrived late thanks to the Niblet letting the map blow out of the window of the unairconditioned BelAir and into unfindable infinity, Spike could tell his volunteering to go to Camp Wa-Sha-Shu, a cluster of patched canvas tents on uneven wooden platforms, a lodge badly in need of a roof job, two reeking outhouses, a rickety shower house in need of paint, a pool emptied for repairs, and a reed choked lake with a rack of dented canoes plonked down beside it all in the middle of a gigantic thorn bush, was a mistake.

Even if it _had_ made Dawnie stop crying.

Spike reached for the bottle under the seat, but was interrupted by Dawnie's squeals as she scrambled out of the back seat to greet the pack of girls approaching the DeSoto, "Bloody hell, who let the soddin' dogs out?" he snarled, shoving the bottle back out of sight before lighting up a fresh one while fighting the urge to lock all the doors at the giggling onslaught of skinned knees, boy band t-shirts, orthodontia, bad perms, and cheap strawberry lipgloss.

Instead, he parked the DeSoto among the Mommymobiles and a large brand new bright yellow HumVee with a Marine Corps license plate and base stickers, where it slouched disreputably like the black sheep of the family at a suburban family reunion.

"I can't do this." Spike mumbled, forehead pressed against the hard plastic steering wheel, "I soddin' can't do this."

If he _ever_ got the soddin' chip out of his head, he would find Hank Summer's address and put more than just the frighteners on the irresponsible bastard.

Or maybe Spike'd speed things up and hire something large and dangerous to randomly attack Hank Summers while he was on the toilet.


	5. Chapter 5

"No smoking." The camp director, a tall bony woman with a face like a dropped frozen chicken potpie glared at Spike, "We're in the middle of a fire watch – plus it's bad for the girls." Spike tucked the cigarette he'd just pulled from the pack behind one ear before making a show of shoving his menthols and lighter back into one of the side pockets of the cargo pants he'd borrowed from Xander without asking. Irritated, he began fidgeting next to the Niblet on one of the splintery wooden benches that ringed the campfire circle. Bloody Hell, if the potential for a wildfire was that bad, why the Hell were they sittin' 'round one big enough to incinerate most of the county they were sittin' slappin' mosquitoes in?

Satisfied, the director turned to address the rest of the campers, Spike flipped her a casual two-fingered salute. The girls surrounding him giggled. The director turned 'round and glared at him suspiciously.

Spike made a point of looking innocent.

Frowning, the director turned back to the rest of the group, "ANYWAY. We're glad all of you can attend this year's Me and My Guy Camping Retreat."

Spike shifted around on the uncomfortable seat, trying to avoid any splinters big enough to kill him. Dawnie, like most of the other girls had brought some sort of homemade cushion to sit upon, but none for him. Badly in need of a smoke, the vampire scanned the other campers: mainly girls in hoodies, all knobby knees and braces with a near equal number of pot-bellied middle-aged father types (Bloody Hell, an entire soddin' army of Giles!), and Ayawamat, if Spike remembered what was on the name tag the big man wore, a lumbering hairy-armed tattooed hulk of a man with a high and tight haircut who took up most of a bench with a tiny dark-haired girl in pigtails and a tu-tu skort on his lap.

The scent which now wafted towards him on the cold breeze coming out of the surrounding mountains was rank and animalish- like the bear enclosure at the Sunnydale Zoo with a whiff of something alien mingled in.

Ayawamat was a demon.

Great, that's all Spike needed.

Distracted, Spike didn't hear the rest of the Director's speech as the two demons studied each other across the dampened down fire circle. It was no species he knew, but here Ayawamat was, out in the open, ugly as you please.

Unlike Clem, who was content to live on the fringes, feeding off of whatever came his way from the human world, demons like the one across the fire circle made a point of "fitting in", even buying houses and having jobs, putting their spawn in the local schools… running for public office…

Dawnie broke Spike's chain of thought when she leaned against him, dozing off during the kumbayahs and the rig-a-bam-boos (What exactly the Hell was a rig-a-bam-boo anyway?) He caught her as she slid down, her head winding up in his lap with a light snore with her clutching the pink pony charm in one hand. He looked up expecting to see the other demon across the fire circle and blinked in the firelight; Ayawamat was gone, the tiny girl now sitting with a group of other girls and their fathers, singing loudly.

Instead, in the shadows behind the now bowed bench, a pair of green eyes glowed at him, about the height of a toddler, or maybe a bobcat.

He'd seen bobcats in the cemetery, but even the mangiest of 'em didn't smell like a swamp just before a thunderstorm, and it certainly wasn't the reeking outhouses at the bottom of the hill reminding everyone of their presence. This was something new, something… water-logged …decaying…

Near gagging, Spike stood, easing Dawnie's head onto the bench, eyes fixed on the twin spots of green fire. Some of the girls were making a "What's that smell?" expression, so it wasn't his imagination.

Spike slipped into the darkened brush that ringed the fire circle and started a cautious stalk towards the smelly little intruder…


	6. Chapter 6

…only to slam sideways into a brick wall.

Or maybe it was a bear.

No, it was Ayawamat, the owner of the yellow Humvee who rose out of the brush, grabbing him by the back of the neck, "Blood-rat." It rumbled around a large lit cigar, adding, " _Tampon_."

Spike went limp, waiting for an out. This was a demon, he could take it, but now was NOT the time or the place to have a rumpus in the bushes – for one thing, he'd have a body to dispose of.

"I've just got back from a tour in 'Stan - leave the damned water baby alone, tampon; 'cause if you ruin this for me and my kid, I'll shove a wooden stake so hard up your skinny ass they'll be sweepin' your worthless dust up in Siberia!"

We'll soddin' see about that, heh— "Hey, ow!" Spike bit his tongue as the larger demon shook him for emphasis.

"I SAID, leave the fuckin' water baby alone or Siberia!" This came with a shake hard enough to make Spike's fangs rattle had he been showing them.

The stench shifted closer, mingled with the scent of adolescent girls and mesquite smoke. The massive demon half-dropped Spike without loosening his grip so that the smaller vampire staggered against him in the full moonlit-dark. "Water baby? What the bloody Hell's a water baby?"


	7. Chapter 7

"*Water baby, something the stupid humans used to make around here. Times are bad? Not enough to eat? Tribes used t' drown the little ones, in the lake so there'd be enough food t' go 'round when they should'a drowned the medicine man that told 'em to lighten the load this way." The large demon gave a long low laugh, lifting Spike higher so that his boots dangled two feet above the dry hardpan, "Stupid, stupid humans, always killin' off the future to preserve the now!"

"You mean, they…?" Even Spike was a little taken aback at such a waste of future meals. Now if he could only move his arms...

"Yeah, serve 'em right: little ones _always_ come back. Come back and tear up shit, but mostly lure grown-ups into the reeds and blub-blub - a body shows up on the shore the next mornin' missin' alllllll the soft, tasty bits. I watched 'em do a baby drownin' back in 1780— bad year. Bad, _bad_ year: too dry, no crops, no game, somethin' had to give. So, into the lake went the little ones, all girls just startin' t' walk and talk, no boys – t' lighten the load." The big demon's nostrils flared thoughtfully, Spike wriggled, but the hand gripping the back of his neck might as well have been made of welded iron as Ayawamat shook him for emphasis.

"Pushed 'em face down in th' muck where the water had been on my clan's side of th' lake— 'til they stopped cryin' and left 'em there for the buzzards and… _my clan_ \- tasty! When word leaked out, the black robes in the mission where Sunnydale is now,held a funeral mass right down there on the beach… got most of the ghosts laid– see where that li'l patch'a sand? Black robes had th' local soldiers hang th' shaman that gave the bad advice to th' tribe and the elders who supported him - all of those souls the black robes they thought they'd saved in th' name a Christ? Left swingin' in the wind for the buzzards… and my clan!" Ayawamat laughed harder, like a rock crusher in a good mood, "It rained the next day, made a flood and the deer came back – washed the mission away, too – barrels of flour, kegs of butter, sacks of maize and dried apples, barrels of wine, beer, molasses, salt pork, dried fish, cheese, dried beans, quinine – it all washed up here – my clan ate good, real good, for months!"

The heavily tattooed demon Marine with his flat nose, massive body, and large teeth was silently lost in memory for a long time before laughing quietly in the moonlight, free hand rasping luxuriantly in the stubble on the back of his head with one massive paw-like free hand, "Real good, tampon, real good."

He shook Spike again, this time even harder, "So leave the water baby… Hell, here they come, one by one, can't get enough coffin nails, can they? Now beat it, tampon!" Ayawamat dropped Spike, causing the vampire to land heavily face-down on the dry desert hardpan "Don' worry," the large demon added along with a swift boot to Spike's ribs, "Water babies is harmless to demons, first cousin, sorta. Harmless, time unless you're an _adult_ -type ." Another kick, "So, don't go messin' this up for my baby girl or I'll rip your head off in front of your "little sister"!"

Spike scrambled away from a third caress; bloody Hell, the stench was now overpowering Dawnie's scent in the darkness. Ribs aching, he scrambled to his feet and plunged into the thorns past more than one father figure sneaking a smoke in the bushes, homing in on the Niblet's screams.

 _*In researching for this story, I have learned that Native American folklore is more than just Manitou, Raven, and Coyote tales. There are some incredibly NASTY monsters if you dig a little, things that make the stuff you find in European folklore look like something out of a Barney episode! Wheedon really did us all a disservice in not exploring the pre-European past of Sunnydale more than just a Thanksgiving episode._


	8. Chapter 8

It had taken Spike nearly an hour to calm Dawnie down. He'd come out of the surrounding brush after tripping over a 'possum, which had hissed at him before toppling over in a dead faint, to find her surrounded by a small mob of girls, the camp director, and the Army of Giles, who'd stood around uncertainly, bald spots and glasses glinting nervously in the firelight.

He'd dodged the bonfire in the center of the circle before elbowing his way through the tangle of arms, legs, and ponytails and took Dawnie, who was crying hysterically away from the pie-faced Director.

Dawnie quieted a little as he sat her back down on the splintery bench he'd abandoned earlier, joining her. Snot-nosed, Buffy's brat kid sister buried her face in his shirt and tightly wrapped her arms around his ribcage. "Well, won't be wearing this shirt again tomorrow," Spike thought as he almost, but not quite put a leg over Dawn's to help restrain her the way he'd had to do more than once when Dru was having one of her bad spells and was preparing to run out into broad daylight, "What the Hell happened?"

"I don't know, she just screamed and fell off the bench!" one of the girls offered nervously, "I mean, like, did she have some sort of fit?"

"I fell asleep and had a nightmare… it was horrible, like a rotting baby…" Dawn's muffled voice came from the vicinity of Spike's left armpit, "It looked right at me , it grabbed my neck – and it smelled horrible!"

Bloody hell, while he'd been out in the brushes socializing with some psycho demon Marine, the water baby had somehow managed to work its way, stink and all, past several dozen people and all the way to Dawn

"Night terrors, no big deal. Had 'em since she was a baby." Spike waved the rest of the group off, "Go back to whatever it was you were doing, I got it!" God, he could use a smoke right about now.

Ayawamat was the last to sit back down beside his daughter, glowering at the two of them as Spike slowly got the Niblet to relax once the singing resumed with one arm around her shoulders rocking her in time to the music the way he'd rocked Dru whenever the memories leaked back in reminding her of what she'd lost.

Dawnie'd relaxed so much that she'd fallen asleep again so he'd had to carry her to her assigned cabin – where he'd been firmly told by the assistant director that yes, he could take Dawn's shoes off, and yes, he could put Dawn in her sleeping bag fully dressed, but NO, he was to sleep on the other side of the camp with the rest of the men because, _regulations._

The girls bunking with Dawn had giggled and stared at him. The director, who had come to see what was going on merely glared.

Spike backed down, opting to slink back to the now abandoned fire circle, nostrils flaring.

He'd caught whiffs of the thing as he'd carried Dawnie to the cabin, but they had faded out the further away from the circle and the lake behind it they'd gone, but still…

Sniffing Spike approached the bench.

The vampire knelt, running his fingers along the rough underside of the bench and pulled them away sticky. Spike sniffed and then gagged— that had been no nightmare of the Niblet's! There was also a small dribble of filth beside the bench, which gave off the powerful odor of waterlogged carrion. Hand over his nose, he groped in one of the borrowed cargo pants pocket with his free hand and pulled out the cigar he'd filched from Ayawamat during their scuffle and his lighter, lit it, and took a deep drag in an attempt to block out the stink.

The stogie tasted odd, but the smoke it gave off reduced the stench of the water baby - enough so that he didn't feel like vomiting. Spike stood, nostrils flaring, it was heading towards the lake and if he was right, it would go across the little beach and… well, to Hell with what the other demon had said about it leaving kids alone, he was going to catch the damned thing and kill it before it could have another go at the Niblet.

A little unsteadily, Spike jogged down the moonlit trail that led to the little beach. Ahead of him, the full moon laid a trail of silver light across the beach and the darkened water beyond. A shadow moved ahead of him, paused and then with the sound of a baby giggling, it dove noiselessly into the water just as Spike reached out to grab it.

Bloody hell, missed!

He sat down heavily on the hard mixture of sand and mud that made up the beach and glanced back. There were his tracks all right, and an erratic trail of smaller ones beside them. Sooooo, the thing had a physical presence, more demon, he guessed, than ghost.

Spike took a long drag on the stolen cigar, orange light outlining the edges of his face. He could kill something like that, now wouldn't _that_ be grand? Feeling a bit dizzy, he stood and turned his back on the lake before passing out.

Later Spike dimly remembered crawling under Dawnie's cabin before passing out again sometime around sunrise.


	9. Chapter 9

Spike woke yelling at a sharp pain in his right foot and then in his head when it sharply connected with the floorboards overhead, causing a rain of dust, glitter, petrified orthodontic elastics, and cookie crumbs.

Swearing, he yelled again, kicking at the possum gnawing on his foot – maybe he shouldn't have taken off his boots before passing out the night before.

Beady-eyed, the possum looked back at him and continued gnawing with dull persistence; Spike gave it a another kick with his free foot, which connected.

The opossum hissed before waddling out from under the cabin into daylight, naked ratlike tail dragging in the dirt. Soddin' nasty things, possums – he'd learned the hard way about their taste for carrion after he'd finally moved out of Xander's parent's basement and into a crypt in the Sunnydale Municipal Cemetery. He'd awakened one evening in front of the telly with one gnawing on one of his ears. Ravenous, he'd pulled the nasty thing off and tried to feed– only to end up retching and tossing the horrible thing aside –North America's only marsupial's taste for carrion, excrement, garbage, and worse left the scruffy little Hellbeasts inedible to all but the most desperate.

Spike was desperate, but he wasn't THAT desperate.

Dust settled, the headache persisted, along with a foul case of cottonmouth. Whatever had been in Ayawamat's cigar was probably illegal, or would be if the U.S Government ever found out about it. Spike groaned and rolled over under the plank floor of the cabin he dimly remembered putting Dawn to bed in, groping for his boots. Outside, the girls were shrieking and giggling as they ran around the grounds… bloody Hell, it wasn't even noon yet! In the stuffy, dusty space beneath the cabin, he pulled up the hood of the borrowed sweatshirt so it would shade his face, yanked on the gloves he'd stuffed into his borrowed cargo pants pockets, and pulled down his welding goggles before crawling the same direction as his earlier attacker…

…oh God, his head… felt almost as bad… as the time… he'd nicked… a bottle of home brew… from Clem...

...which involved six mashed whole Cane toads or that's what the hand-lettered label claimed. After emptying the bottle, Spike'd wandered out of his lair arguing with mushrooms that weren't there before passing out in a public playground on the other side of town. He awakened with a jolt at sunrise with his favorite shirt ripped open, chest exposed and a large paramedic bent over him with a concerned look on her face and two defibrillator paddles in her hands – he'd scrambled to his feet and bolted, spending the rest of the day hungover in a nearby dumpster in a torn shirt surrounded by rats, empty juice boxes, and stale graham crackers.

Anyway, the stuff went well with Coco Pebbles.

Spike stood up, dusting himself off. If he could just get to the cooler in the back seat of the DeSoto… there was a giggle.

He turned around.

Dawn and Ayawamat's brat, Alyana by her nametag, were staring at him wide-eyed.

Great. Just bloody great. An audience.

"Do you always sleep under people's houses?" The dark, heavyset little girl giggled, "Because that's stupid!"


	10. Chapter 10

Alyana was annoying.

Really annoying.

Really, really annoying.

She was also Dawn's best friend, making the girls inseparable.

Which was even more annoying.

WHY Spike never noticed the talkative little girl's distinct scent on Dawn before, he had no idea, but the 13 year old sitting next to his "little sister" in a Dayglo lime green boy band t-shirt and a mouthful of braces across the lunch table in the dining hall gave off whiffs of demon, some sort of animal and… human?

Worse, she was menstruating.

As were more than half of the other girls at the event.

Including Dawn.

Spike's stomach gurgled.

Loudly.

Ayawamat glowered at him while shoving a third tuna sandwich into his pie hole, "Don't even think of it, blood _rat_." He reached for a fourth from the platter between them.

"What'd you say, daddy?"

"Nothin' baby, just letting your friend's "big brother" know I'm going to finish off the last of the sandwiches."

"Oh." Alyana went back to chattering with the Niblet, something about one boy band or another and which one they would each marry first, and who got dibs on Justin.

Bloody waste of time, marriage, when you could just invite the entire lot of 'em into the nearest dark alley for potluck, Spike observed sourly as he took another long drink from the closed Big Gulp in front of him. Earlier, while chewing a handful of dry aspirin, he thought he'd managed to tip a thawing blood bag followed by a generous splash of Bourbon into the near bucket-sized cup unobserved from the cooler in the DeSoto's back seat only to notice that a glowering Ayawamat was looming five feet away, arms folded and back hair rippling in the thin high altitude desert wind from the armhole and collar of his Marine Corps singlet.

"Sod. Off."

The hulking demon made a huffing noise before moving with surprising speed back towards the main public area of the camp, leaving Spike to breakfast of a sort, which mercifully was indoors so he could put down the soddin' hood, causing a sudden lull in the chattering roar of a room full of girls. Being stared at was bad enough, but the blushes, stares, and giggles along with the flat, hard expressions of over a dozen fathers of teenaged daughters made Spike waver between wanting to take his chances out in the brush with a freshly lit fag or grinning back red of tooth while giving a two-handed double fingered British working-class salute.

Head pounding and not exactly in the mood for a direct confrontation, Spike compromised by pointedly ignoring everyone and taking a long, hard pull at the slushy cocktail of O+ and Bourbon, only to get in trouble for putting his elbows along with a pack of menthols and his Zippo on the table followed by a badly-needed light-up, followed by him violently pantomiming ripping the head and wings off of the invisible "Table Manners Fairy" (Fairies, _bah!_ nasty little blighters, worse than hornets!) Dawnie handed him as passed to her by the Assistant Director – so much for apologizing to an invisible fairy when something far, far worse lurked somewhere among the rubbish bins outside the kitchen back door, judging by the smell, which intensified before fading away.

Then there'd been that soddin' dead beaver game after the tables had been cleared, followed by arts and crafts: some sort of stupid bracelet made of plastic cord project – where a thoroughly bored Spike scandalized the craft leader and fascinated the girls sitting nearby by showing Dawn how to make a working hangman's noose – the whole time with Alyana chattering nonstop with Dawnie and her father giving Spike the stinkeye while turning out one perfectly knotted bracelet after another with his clumsy looking, paw-like hands before the pie-faced Director yanked him aside as the rest of the group thundered out into the big open space outside for outdoor games before lunch when he'd snuck out back to cop a much-needed smoke in the shade among the bins.


	11. Chapter 11

"MISTER Summers, _William_ …" Spike turned, wondering who this Summers wanker was, only to realize that bloody Hell it was him that the name was being aimed at by the Director as she bore down on him, disagreeable face set as he copped a much-needed smoke out by the bins in the deep shade behind the dining hall.

He'd used the Summers name for a laugh when filling out the enrollment form yesterday evening during check-in, figuring that if Buffy ever found out her reaction'd be priceless, seeing as she saw him as something she'd regret finding on the bottom of her shoes after patrolling Sunnydale's one and only dog park.

"Yeah? W _hat!"_

"Put that out. It's bad for the girls and a fire hazard!" The Director continued, frowning, "I realize that this sort of event is not your "thing", which from the looks of you I suspect involves… never mind… " She paused, "I also understand, what with your sun and dietary allergies, that being out here isn't easy for you - still, I'm glad that Dawn, your little sister, was able to participate in this event thanks to you volunteering when your father couldn't make it at the last minute. However, if you don't stop it, William, you and Dawn will have to leave."

 _Is that so? How's about I start by…_ The chip embedded in Spike's already aching brain fired a warning shot at this, causing him to flinch and shove his hands into the borrowed hoodie's front pocket in a show of putting his lighter and fags away to hide their sudden tremble while grinding his little bit of temporary sanity under one heel on the graveled path. Frowning, the woman continued, watching his foot as it raised a divot, "If I have to, I will ban you from all future Girl Scouting events – you have been warned."

 _Suits me, bitch!_

"I know, I know, I sound harsh, but most of the girls in this council, most councils, don't get to participate in Me and My Guy events. Dawn's one of them." Old Pie-Face sighed putting a hand on Spike's shoulder, before quickly pulling it away, "Don't ruin this for her." Unconsciously wiping her hand on her capris, the Director began walking towards the flagpole in the center of the common area where the girls and their fathers were gathering, "Okay?"

 _Maybe I will, and maybe I won't…_

Anyway, seeing Ayawamat fall flat on his ugly face during the sack race almost made the whole aggravating trip worth it.


	12. Chapter 12

Canoeing, as far as Spike was concerned, looked like a bloody waste of time, but the Niblet signed them both up for a few turns around the reed-choked lake before dinner. Still, having spent two years competitively rowing on the Thames for Cambridge back in the 1800s before his mother's consumption gobbled up all the money set aside for his education, how hard could it be?

"Oh, lookie here…" He paused on his way to help Dawn lever a canoe off of the sagging rack, crouching briefly at the water's edge to study a cluster of tracks he'd missed the night before: a large animal, a smaller animal, and a single, tiny child's footprint, "Come ON, Spike!" Dawnie grunted as she tugged at a dented canoe, "Hurry UP!"

Spike straightened, "Hang on, will you, pet?" Absently he stared out over the small, near-blinding expanse of open water in the center of the small lake, headache back and face tingling despite the goggles and the hood he'd arranged so that it shaded his face. As far as the vampire could tell, the so-called water baby wasn't around, maybe holing up for the day… the way he should be… "Just hang on, _all right?!_ "

Dawn's face fell, "My best friend and her dad are already on the water with everybody else..." She mumbled, turning away, hand playing with the obnoxious pony charm. "I, I… I don't want to miss… anything..."

Spike kicked at the hard packed damp mixture of mud and sand that made up the little beach, "Sorry, pet … didn't mean to snap…" Awkwardly he reached out a gloved hand, pulling her to him for a brief almost-hug against his side.

Dawn pulled away, beaming, "So you'll come out on the lake with me?"

"Yeah. Now, gimme the damned paddle."


	13. Chapter 13

Lost Girl Lake (well, that's what the soddin' sign on the end of the dock called it) was so clear you could see all the way to the bottom, which wasn't very interesting unless you liked watching fish swim.

Luckily Dawnie did, allowing Spike to concentrate on paddling, which was trickier than rowing.

At least with rowing you sat backwards in the racing shell moving back and forth in time with everybody else in the craft while the coxswain did the steering. As long as you didn't break rhythm, the whole bally lot of you'd go forward— no worries there, mate!

Canoes, on the other hand, were treacherous beasts, rather like cats, really. One moment you'd be petting one (a cat, not a canoe) on the tum all nice-like, and next thing you knew you'd be tangled up in teeth and claws, like his relationship with Dru most of the time, but considerably larger and far more dangerous.

With canoes, it'd start out with a graceful, silent glide across the water, then some inconsiderate bugger would shift their weight or paddle on the wrong side and the next thing you knew you were either in the unbelievably cold water in the mountain stream fed lake with the canoe floating upside down one way and the paddles the other, or the whole ridiculous combination of balding 40-something weekend warrior in cargo shorts and flip flops and teen-something Boy Band addict would end up running aground as the two argued about how to steer the damned thing, ending with the twee junkie in tears because "Daddy yelled at me!"

Which Spike had to admit, as he tried to remember that if you paddled on the left side the canoe would go right and if you paddled on the right, it would go left, was pretty damned funny as long as it wasn't happening to him and Dawn.

He paused, letting their treacherous little craft drift silently past yet another casualty being helped out of the water by one of the camp counselors. So far there was no sign of the water baby. Maybe, like him, it only came out at night if it could help it. He began to relax, getting into the rhythm of paddling, mind drifting slightly, watching a mallard drake, his hen, and their seemingly endless stream of ducklings quack past (way t' go mate, keep up the good work – I once seen what your kind keep stashed in your trousers that one time Dru an' me got stuck in th' boathouse for a day in th' Sunnydale City Park lake. It's almost as big as you... Dru was bloody amazed, kept her occupied and in th' mood f' hours, watchin' your kind on th' job… now I know why duck rhymes w' fu... ) "Oi pet, settle down and sit up straight, you'll tip us over!"

"I know, but baby duckies are sooooooo cute!" Dawn stopped bouncing and pulled out a little disposable camera, "Get closer, I wanna take a picture - pleeeeeeeease? I wanna show mom and Buffy how cute they are!"

(Not if you knew the awful truth about their old man... heh heh.) "Yeah, yeah, right. C _ute_." Smirking in the shade of his hood and goggles, Spike cautiously back paddled, causing the canoe to drift to a halt, and got ready to counterbalance any sudden move from the Niblet. If the brat wound up in the drink and Buffy found out about it, there'd be Hell to pay, and if Joyce ever found out, he'd feel like he'd somehow let her down, which for some reason was even worse than the thought of having to replace his telly yet again.

Spike paused, sniffing, who farted?

Frowning, he looked around. Ayawamat and his stocky daughter were gliding along, the front end of the canoe high in the air from the big demon's bulk in the back – Ayawamat glowered at him as they passed, Alyana tossing a Frisbee to another father-daughter laden canoe. There was another canoe further along crewed by a man and his twin brace faces…

A bubble surfaced nearby, popping with that same, familiar stench. Bloody hell, he should never have allowed himself to be talked into taking the Niblet right into the damned thing's territory, daylight or no! Spike started paddling them towards the shore as more bubbles rose around them, releasing the all too familiar stink of the water baby as they burst.

"Spiiiiiike! Stop it, I can't get a good picture… ow, hey!" The Niblet, who'd been leaning out over the water to take a picture, flailed for a moment when the canoe jerked with Spike's growing panic, pink pony pendant swinging free as a rising dark mass blossomed beneath her, writhing streamers of black— oh bloody Hell, no, no, NO! Spike dropped the paddle and grabbed for Buffy's little sister just as a tiny, rotting hand shot up out of the water and grabbed the Pepto-Bismol pink pendant, dragging Dawn into the water by it so fast she didn't have time to scream.


	14. Chapter 14

Spike found himself standing on the gritty bottom of a mountain river fed lake looking up at the undersides of canoes and startled ducks trying to figure out which way the water baby had dragged Dawn before she drowned.

Off near the patch of reeds that the Mallard family had streamed out of he caught a glimpse of a rapidly disappearing pair of pink Converse. Fighting against the sodden weight of his boots and clothes he clumsily swam after them, fingertips brushing against the soles as the dark mass of what felt like hair tangled around him.

The feet were jerked out of his reach.

Spike swam harder, kicking off one and then the other boot in the brutally cold water so that his lower legs and feet cramped in the sudden temperature change, even as the loss of his Doc Martins allowed him to speed up.

He surged forward in a stream of bubbles, hand connecting with one of Dawn's shoes, held on, and yanked.

The water baby yanked back, leaving him with an empty sneaker.

He lost the little shoe and flailing in the watery darkness connected with both of Dawn's flailing feet. Bracing himself on the lake bed for leverage, he heaved backwards, pulling Buffy's sister out of the water baby's grasp before frantically heading for the bright mirror ceiling of the lake, fish scattering around him as his borrowed water-logged cargoes slipped off his narrow hips.

Bloody Hell, now what? Not that it mattered; grabbing the back of Dawn's t-shirt, he braced his feet on the lake bottom, angling the girl so that she'd be the first out of the water and shoved hard so that she'd surface between two canoes which were circling overhead.

Spike surfaced right behind her into unfiltered afternoon sunlight, screamed when he started to smolder, and ducked back down in the water as someone dragged the limp Dawn out of his hands and into their canoe.

Bloody Hell with a side order of daylight! Pantsless, bootsless, miserably cold and in danger of damply combusting like a newspaper left out overnight in the rain, Spike took refuge in the shadows beneath the rickety dock, listening to Dawn coughing up water and crying where he couldn't get to her.

Spike's only consolation at the moment was that he hadn't opted to go commando.


	15. Chapter 15

A sputtering, crying Dawn was wrapped in a blanket before being rushed to the camp nurse's cabin while a waterlogged Spike watched unseen from the deep shadows beneath the nearby dock, leaving him trapped with no pants, no boots, and at the mercy of the sun which was at least an hour off from dipping behind the Sierra Pelonas while some of the more water savvy fathers paddled around looking for him…

…or his dead body.

 _Now there's a bit of a laugh!_

Using the struts on the underside of the dock, Spike heaved himself out of the frigid water and further beneath the old wood and steel structure where it met dry land before digging around the pocket of the borrowed hoodie. His fingers found a depressingly soggy mess of paper and tobacco and the wick of his Zippo was soaked, rendering the venerable lighter temporarily useless even if he had something to light up.

Damn.

He'd left a fresh pack in the glove compartment of the DeSoto, which, thanks to no pants and a strong desire to not spontaneously combust from the toes up, might as well have been parked in downtown Detroit attracting tasty thieves and vandals.

And he was damned if he'd go out there after dark half-Monty. Even someone who once impulsively diverted a portion of the Paris sewers to flood a nunnery because Dru thought it would be amusing, had his limits —let the staff take care of Dawnie. He'd get there as soon as he could… ummmm, _somehow._

"I found his pants!"

Oh. Bloody. Hell. Spike covered his eyes with one hand, the other one cradling his currently useless lighter.

"Yeah, but where's the rest of him? Shouldn't we call the County Sheriff – if he's drowned…"

"Shut it, you'll cause a panic!"

 _No! Don't call the Sheriff! If Buffy or her mum finds out, they'll have my guts for garters,_ Spike thought as he doubled over in the cramped space and coughed up a handful of wriggling minnows he must have sucked in when he went after Dawnie. _Oh look, somebody's lost a tarp – me arse is saved - if I stick to the deepest shade and go the long way 'round, I'll…_

Spike grabbed the nasty square of rotting canvas, dislodging a small snake and several large scorpions and started pulling it over his head and around his waist and froze… someone was on the dock overhead, no, two someones, big feet, and slightly smaller feet,

"Daddy, did you hear somebody barfing? I think he's under the dock!"

Oh God, not Alyana again.

And her old man.

Great.

Just great.


	16. Chapter 16

"Whatcha doin' under there?" Giggling, Alyana knelt down down peering at Spike under the camp dock where he'd taken refuge among the snakes, scorpions, and oh God, not another possum!

Which was now hissing and shitting at him, seeing as playing dead to a dead man hadn't worked.

"Yo, he's over here, alive and okay- call off the search!" Grinning, Ayawamat leaned one-handed on the splintery dock's surface, causing it to groan and tilt slightly, and looked down at Spike, " Heh, I like your new girlfriend, tampon, is it incest? She looks just like you!"Ayawamat waved Spike's, no _Xander's,_ cargos just out of reach, "Missing something?"

"Give me those bloody trousers or I'll…"

"I _said_ , he's okay, just a little shook up – I got it!" the larger demon interrupted, waving off the approaching fathers and the Camp Director, snarling under his breath, "Or you'll _what,_ burst into flame?"

"Oh, my, God, is he a… mom says I'm not supposed to talk to _his_ kind of demon, ewwww!" Alyana wrinkled her nose while backing off, "Ewwwwww, daaaaaaaad! You told me blood rats are just dead people that don't know when to lay down and stop bothering the living, gross-gross-GROSS!"

"Baby, go take care of your friend in the fire circle, maybe help start the weenie roast. Me and this, guy, _heh_ … need to talk." Ayawamat shook the disputed pants at his spawn to get her to go away before sitting heavily on the weathered dock.

"But what if she's…"

"Princess, what does your nose tell you? Is Dawn the one all bundled up in 90 degree heat?"

"Soooo, Dawn's ok, then?"

"Yeah, Princess, Dawn's ok, but this guy's _not!_ "

"Whaaaaaat-everrrrrrrrr!" Alyana flip-flopped in her lime green flip-flops back towards the fire circle, only looking back over her shoulder once and pretending to gag. "Give me back me soddin' trousers." Spike tried to snag them without exposing himself more than he had to.

"I told you, leave the water baby alone." Ayawamat yanked them just out of reach.

Bloody Hell, that again?

"Well, if the manky thing'd leave my "sister" alone, I wouldn't be bothering it!" If he could snatch the pants and make a run for the shadow of the boathouse… Spike groped behind him, gloved fingers coming in contact with the hissing, drooling scavenger… oi, things just might be in his favor for once. "Ever think a' that?"

The big stubble faced Marine appeared to consider this for about 1.1 seconds, "Leave my little sis… the water baby alone or I'll…" he rolled the pants into a bundle and pretended to long-bomb them back into the lake, "…see to it you never leave this place unless it's in the bag of a vacuum cleaner - son of a BITCH!"

Bellowing, Spike's tormentor reached for his face where the possum made direct contact with it as swung by its long, ratlike tail by Spike in a stream of drool and other bodily fluids, so that he dropped the vampire's borrowed pants. Spike would have grabbed them and run, only he was on his knees, smoking from the waist down, clutching his head, gasping from the white-hot burst of pain the chip imbedded in his brain sent his way because he'd just attacked something that registered as human.

Tail smarting, the possum waddled away in search of a safer place to scrounge, like the middle of the nearest busy Interstate.

Head aching, Spike ran past it, clumsily yanking on the pants as he made a dash for the fire circle.


	17. Chapter 17

"That's it! I've had enough, no, no, no, no NO we are soddin' out-of-here!" Spike snarled, buckling up his pants while speed-limping up the gravel path through the brush towards the camp's fire circle. "Don't much care if Dawn fights it, too much, just soddin' way too much, don't give a blood bank's discards if she cries, but we are soddin' leavin, owwww, _fuck!_ " He paused, pulling a cactus spine out of the bottom of one foot through the tangled mess of the remains of his sock from where the rough ground had shredded it. At least the setting sun had gone behind the surrounding mountains, so the parts of him that he could no longer hide beneath his clothes weren't smoldering. His hood flopped down as he angrily tossed the thorn and his mangled socks into the surrounding bushes before shoving back the welding goggles he'd somehow not managed to lose in the underwater struggle with the water baby before resuming his limping, angry stride, Oh yeah, the water baby, he'd caught Ayawamat's slip by the boathouse, how very bleedin'-bloody innerestin'…

"Spike, where have you been?" Dawnie ran past the roaring fire in the middle of the damped-down circle clutching a weenie-stick, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to tip over the…" She tried to hug him.

He pushed Buffy's sister away, 'We're out of here. NOW."

Dawnie stumbled backwards, lower lip trembling, "But, we've got one more night, and tomorrow we're all going on a hike…"

"No, I've had it, we're goin' home and that's final, Drusi… I mean, DAWN!" No, no, no, was that the water baby he'd just got a whiff of? Spike grabbed Dawn's hand and started dragging her in the direction of the DeSoto past the gaggle of girls and their fathers. Everyone, he noticed was staring at them in the firelight as the wind began to rise.

The Director made as if to say something, Spike shoved past her, Dawnie in tow, "Owwwwww, stop it, you're hurting me!" Buffy's sister wailed, "I don't want to leave!"

"Tough – we're out of here even if I have to bloody carry you!" Ow, a sandburr, ow, OW, was that broken glass? "Oh for the love of all that's evil!" Spike came to an abrupt halt, the Niblet slamming into him.

"Dar! Dar!" The water baby toddled squidgily up to them at the opening of the path to the parking lot holding out its decaying little hands,

"Not you again – sod off!"

"Dar! Dar!" the thing's voice was gelatinously insistent as it ooze-stumbled past him towards Dawn, "Dar! Dar!"

Dawn screamed, and Spike kicked the nasty thing, bare foot connecting with it solidly in a burst of putrifying, waterlogged flesh mingled with tiny bones and a tangle of hair before dragging Dawn down the path at a dead run.

"You son-of-a-bitch, leave my little sister alone!" Spike stopped, Dawnie slamming into him as he turned. Ayawamat was on the other side of the fire, charging at them, somehow going down on all fours, face splitting down the middle and falling away as he ran through the cooking fire in a shower of sparks and burning logs, the other campers fleeing in panic as a large, unexpected bear bowled them over.

Bloody Hell, a bear?

"Daaaaaaaaaaaaddy, wait for me!" Alyana dropped her weenie stick, going down on all fours in a single fluid motion, shedding her human skin so that a smaller bear now ran after the larger one.

Bloody Hell, two bears? Spike grabbed the now screaming Dawn and tossed her over one shoulder, running blindly through the brush as it blazed up around him in the increasing wind. The water baby had reassembled itself and was toddling after them, hands out, "Dar? Dar?" as first the Ayawamat bear and then the Alyana bear tore past it like an out of control locomotive and it's tail-end caboose.

There, ahead, the parking lot— Spike managed a sprint towards the DeSoto as a Joshua tree burst into flames beside him, along with the surrounding sagebrush with Ayawamat and his daughter gaining fast.

Spike dug into the cargo pants, fumbling for his keys: not there, not there, he yelled in frustration; they must be on the bottom of Lost Girl Lake. Feet bleeding, he slammed his fist through the driver's side window and unlocked the door in a shower of glass; he'd have to hotwire the damned thing!


	18. Chapter 18

Spike reached back, unlocked the back driver's side door of the De Soto, ripped it open to the wail of abused hinges, and bodily tossed Dawnie into the back seat as the spark laden wind ignited the sagebrush at the back of the dirt parking lot. He climbed in, slamming the door shut behind him and groped around under the dash board where he'd taped a screwdriver and a small knife where Dru couldn't find them back in the good old bad days after in a fit of playfulness, she'd swallowed his car keys, stranding them both on the side of a Mexican highway for days until nature took it's filthy course.

Now where was that damned cluster of ignition wires? He groped around again beneath the DeSoto's ancient steering column and Zap! "Bloody Hell!" he found the electrical taped set of wires he'd stripped earlier "just in case" Sucking the fingers of his left hand, Spike fumbled around right-handedly as another part of Camp Wa-Sha-Shu went up in smoke, until he found the knife, which had fallen to the passenger's side of the floor after he'd dropped it.

"Spike, I see the bear! I see the bear!"

"Shut up, I'm trying to start the bloody car!" he snarled as he hurriedly twisted the now stripped wires together before jamming the small knife into the ignition, snapping off the delicate inner leads before pulling it out and grabbing the screwdriver. He looked up, the bear was charging right at the little car, "Sod off!" he screamed, shoving the screwdriver into the ignition and giving it a savage twist.

The frequently bitchy DeSoto coughed indecisively before roaring to life. Spike threw it into reverse, floored it, and shot out of his now smoking parking space straight into what Ayawamat had become with a dull thud.

With a jeering, shuddering cough, the DeSoto died.

Ayawamat slowly climbed on top of the vehicle and began to bounce even as a county fire truck raced past, lights flashing, followed by another.


	19. Chapter 19

The DeSoto, unintended mosh pit participant in a demon Grizzly's rage, violently bounced up and down, shaking up the contents of the back seat, including Dawnie. The cooler full of blood bags tipped over in a shower of ice, water, and dinner, accompanied by the shattering of several dozen bottles of Guiness plus the shop-lifted Pappy Van Winkle's Family Reserve that Spike had been saving for when he got the chip out.

Spike ducked a flailing dishpan-sized paw complete with five steak knife claws which came in from above through the broken driver's side window, stabbing at it with the screwdriver, only to go fetal, screaming as the chip in his brain fired again.

The DeSoto dipped, rocking forward as the smaller Alyana bear climbed onto the hood and began leisurely ripping off the windshield wipers.

Another fire truck rumbled past, followed by a helicopter above.

Not content with trying to pry Spike out of the car, the Ayawamat bear stuck his massive head in through the window and gave out a long, upside-down moaning bellowing roar in a blast of bad breath and spit.

Having learned his lesson, Spike wrapped his arms around his head and crammed his skinny body as far down on the alcohol and ice-soaked floor of the passenger's side as he could, just out of reach of the massive paw, which flailed around, claws ripping long gouges out of the ancient vinyl upholstery in a silent explosion of equally ancient foam rubber, a used condom (Dru liked to use the novelty ones as balloons), and one of Dru's many missing earrings.

Thwarted, the demon Grizzly went back to bouncing and bellowing.

Bored, the Marine's cub… daughter… ummm, whatever? Slid off the hood, causing the DeSoto to jounce violently upward as she wandered to Dawn's side of the car, sniffing the door handle.

A sheriff's car and then a water truck jounced past them on the rutted dirt track, stained orange by the full-blown wildfire, dodging a small herd of deer as they ran ahead of the flames.

"Dawn, oof!, pet, ungh... you all right back there?"

"Y-y-y-y-yes?" Another crash followed by a second wave of wasted Guiness, "Why do you have to keep all this junk in your back seat? Mom keeps the back seat, ooooof! Of our car clean… ow! Why can't yo-ooooof! You… eeek!" Spike's canvas bag of burglary tools clattered to the floor, hitting Dawn. "Ooooowwwwwww," she wailed, "Now my nose is bleeding— this is all your fault!"

"Be quiet, pet, ungh, I'll make it up to you later, I'm trying to hear something…"

In his earlier panic, Spike had missed that their attacker's cries had been more than random, incoherent bellows. Amongst Ayawamat's ear-numbing moans and roars, there had been words in time to the bouncing.


	20. Chapter 20

"…dammit, _dammit,_ I tried! _I tried!_ " Ayawamat roared, massive paws pounding dents in the Detroit steel overhead in time to his rant, "I failed! Dad, you sent me and the baby back to mom's people when the red spots killed her! – I didn't know! You told me to protect her but I didn't know!"

A crack appeared in the windshield as the demon Grizzly shifted his weight for a fresh bouncing onslaught, "I didn't know! I didn't know, they sent me out to hunt, and they…" Another incoherent roar, Dawnie screamed and more bottles shattered as the DeSoto began to rock sideways. "I found her laying in the mud like so much shit! I'm sorry, dad, I didn't know, I DIDN'T KNOW!"

If Spike hadn't been so busy ducking yet another swipe from a paw the size of a dishpan, this might have been interesting, useful even.

"Dad! Dad!" Alyana called from the edge of the parking lot, "I found Aunt Chenoa. She's all right!"

The roaring and rocking stopped.

Pulling himself up by the steering wheel a dripping Spike dragged himself to the driver's side window, "What's going on?" Dawn called, "Ewwwww, I smell like beer…"

"Shhhh, mind the broken glass…something's happening…" Spike reached over the back of the seat and pulled Buffy's little sister from under a clatter of broken bottles and burglar's tools, "Look."

He got a better look at what Alyana was leading against the wavering background of flames, and added, "No, pet. On second thought, _don't_ look."

"I can look if I want to… oh my God, it's horrible, like a rotting baby!" Dawnie whimpered, "That's what was in my nightmare… that's… what pulled me under… Spike, you knew about this, didn't you? Why didn't you tell me, why did you lie to me – it wasn't a nightmare!"

"That was my little sister." The bear overhead moaned, rocking side to side, "The black robes had so much food, they wouldn't share so our mother's people murdered her… and I couldn't stop them…"

"Dar!" the little figure broke away from Alyana and stumbled towards them across the gravel, hands outstretched. "Dar! Dar!"

"God, Spike, it stinks, it's… it's… don't let it touch me!" Scooting backwards on the DeSoto's back seat, Dawn quavered as the little blob of hair and rotting flesh climbed wetly up the side of the car, hanging in the broken window one hand stretched to her.

"Chenoa couldn't change like I could, our people didn't want her… if she could have changed…" The bear moaned, "I wouldn't have found her… I wouldn't have found her… all the clan boys were allowed to live… I found her body… ravens ate her eyes…"

"Dar! Dar… dar?" The stinking, mushy thing with it's core of hard bones clambered wetly up the screaming Dawn who had scooched up against the opposite car door, groping for the handle that was digging into her back even as Spike unsuccessfully tried to yank it off of her.

"Let her have it." Alyana called as she ran foreward.

"Have what?" Spike lost his grip on the nasty thing with a squelchy noise.

"Dar!"

"Bloody hell, call that thing off of Dawn!"

"Dar!"

"I didn't know!"

"Dad, shut up!" After yanking open the back door Alyana joined Spike in trying to pull her "aunt" off of the screaming Dawn in the cramped space of the DeSoto's back seat, "Dawn, she wants your little good luck charm, that pink pony thing. Just give it to her and she'll go away!"

"OhGodOhGodOhGodOhGod…" Dawnie whimpered, gagging, "OhGodOhGod." With trembling hands she pulled the Pepto-Bismol pink charm's purple string off over her ale and worse soaked hair and threw it as far as she could away from herself, which wasn't far, "There, there! Now, leave me alone!"

The door handle finally cooperated, spilling Dawn, Spike, and Alyana onto the now hot ground in a messy heap of beer and broken glass. Alyana's repulsive relative sat framed by DeSoto's back door, giggling and kicking it's feet squashily against the side of the seat, "Dar?" it cooed in a questioning tone, "Dar?"

Dawn slithered wetly to the top of the struggling heap, raking her drenched hair out of her eyes, "Yes, take the doggoned thing, I don't want it any more!"

"La mía!" The mingling of bone and mush snatched the pony charm up from the ruined seat, "La mía! La mía!" Dancing, it hopped sqodgily down out of the car, holding up the pink pony, "La mía!"

"Sorry about that." Alyana pulled herself upright using the open back door, "Dad gets like this, like… ummmm… _EVERY YEAR w_ hen we come here to visit."

"You…what?" Dawn staggered over to and then leaned against the hood of the mommymobile that the DeSoto was parked next to so that she could wring out her hair and then her Guiness and worse dripping t-shirt.

"Yeah," Alyana reached down and picked something up off of the ground. "We come visit my aunt, bring her some Crayons, coloring books, a new Barbie or _whatever_ , a few bags of Skittles, and like, leave 'em under the dock wrapped in a tarp so they don't get soggy. It makes her happy – who knew she'd want a pony necklace? We'll bring her one ne— Oh no, no, no, NO! Daaaaaad, how can you dooooooo this to me in frooooont of eeeeeeeevrybodyyyyyyyy – put these on, puh-leezzzzz? You're embarrassing me!"

Covering her eyes with her free hand, the heavyset girl waved the whatever it was up at the large hairy outline of what was now a man standing on the DeSoto's roof, "You left your pants back at the campfire so I grabbed 'em 'cause mom'll be pissed at both of us if you come home not wearing any like you did that time you got into a fight with that pacifist after he smashed our windshield with a tire iron…"

"Oh God, I so do not want to see this!" Dawn yelped covering her eyes even as Spike painfully pulled himself upright on his lacerated feet and firmly turned her around so that she was facing AWAY from the DeSoto. This was just one more thing he didn't feel like getting pulled into should Buffy or worse, Joyce, find out that he'd been indirectly responsible for teaching Dawn the basic difference between boys and girls on an unsupervised excursion that he wasn't supposed to be involved in.

Though, seeing as Hank Summers was now firmly scheduled to be lethally attacked by something dangerous on his way to the loo at 3 in the morning in the near future, rendering him unable to take Dawn aside for the _talk_ , Spike might have to step in an…no, no, none of his soddin' business, let Joyce take care of that…

Still, if Buffy ever found out about him… That is if he did… she'd have a cow… soooo it juuuuuust might be worth takin' the Niblet aside aaaand… Spike gave a long slow grin at what a merry dance _that_ would cause the Slayer as he brushed broken glass out of his hair with his free hand, should he take care of that part of the Niblet's, ah, education.

"….anyway, dad gets like, sooooo grouchy, almost like a, well, you _know_ , when we come out here to visit. Mom and I love him, but we will be soooooooooo glad when he gets shipped back to 'Stan next week – he is like all over the house underfoot when he's on leave!"

Meanwhile the Water Baby now wearing Dawn's pony charm had toddled off through the blazing brush in the general direction of the lake. It turned briefly, waving, "Chau! Chau!" before entirely disappearing in the haze and smoke filled darkness as the bright yellow HumVee fired up.

"Bye!" Alyama gave Dawn a squashy hug before scrambling in the passenger side, "See you at next week's troop meeting – sorry about your car, Mr. Summers. If you want, I can come over after school and help you wash my aunt out of the upholstery – Dawn has my number!"

"Bloody hell!"

The Hummer rolled forward a few feet, paused, Spike saw the bulky outline of Ayawamat glaring at him with small red eyes from behind the wheel. A hand came up, flipping him the bird before the heavy vehicle roared out of the lot through the burning brush, swerving to miss a fire truck, and heading towards the Interstate.

"Ewwwwwww," Dawn wailed, "I stink, the camp's on fire, and something that looked like a bear trashed your car… while a stinky baby from Hell left itself all over my shirt…. how am I going to explain this to mooOOOooom? She'll never let me go on another Girl Scout event as long as I liiiiiiiiiiiive!"

"Don't worry, Niblet, I'll think of something." Spike stood staring at the remains of the DeSoto, "I'll think of something – meanwhile, just don't say anything that can be held against either of us."


	21. Chapter 21

"Oh yeah," Spike thought down in the basement of the Magic Box while Giles clattered around overhead, Anya not far behind yattering something or other about markup percentages with Dawnie right behind Anya yattering something or other about getting to wear high heels to the dance, "I thought up something all right..."

...it wasn't much of a plan, not really – he managed to re-hotwire the DeSoto and spent the next hour or so jouncing wildly on it's over-worked suspension with a catacalysmicaly carsick Dawn complaining at his side until the little car managed to limp onto the Interstate.

Finally, exhaust smoking and three hours out of Sunnydale, they pulled into a small, cash-only family-owned motel that didn't ask questions. Dawn had fallen asleep against Spike as he drove, abused stomach thoroughly empty of S'Mores and cherry Kool-Aid (aka. bug juice) and was cross when he woke her up, but was obedient when he handed her a roll of bills, telling her to get them two adjoining rooms because his feet hurt too much to stand around arguing over prices with the naga night clerk.

Rooms obtained, he'd handed Dawn a key and ordered her to lock herself in and take a shower or six while he shoveled out the DeSoto behind the building. Dawn had bitched that even if she wanted to, all her stuff had probably been burned up back at the camp and if she had her way, what she was wearing at the moment would join it – so what was she supposed to wear?

Which meant a trip to the nearby exit ramp truck plaza in the spare pair of boots he found buried under tire irons, tarps, and Clem's empty Cheetos bags in the trunk of the DeSoto.

Once there, all he could find was a XXXL black shirt that read "Truck Driver - Because Badass Mother F*cker is not an Official Job Title".

Dawn had whined from behind her closed bathroom door after he tossed it in at her. "Look, pet, it was either that or "Running Drops Pounds. Carpenters Drop Panties".

"Oh."

At least the truck plaza shop was holding a special on Febreeze by the gallon, which he drenched the entire interior of the DeSoto with sometime around midnight after running it through a pressure wash designed more for the exterior of semis than the interior of a small, disreputable vintage muscle car.

Two A.M. found Spike on the musty bed in his own barren little room, damp hair like an angry albino Brill-O pad after his third shower, drinking tepid beer and O+ from a stadium cup and watching the desert burn on the local news channel while pulling thorns, broken glass, sand burrs and cactus spines from the soles of his feet with a pair of cheap tweezers from the truck plaza which he hadn't exactly paid for.

Dawn knocked at the door between their rooms and entered, all but smothered by the Bad Ass t-shirt – "Did you really set Camp Wa-Sha-Shu on fire?" Her eyes widened at his hair as it shot out in all directions, but she said nothing, just giggled.

Annoyed, Spike paused in the middle of pulling out a really deeply embedded spine before sheepishly admitting, "Nah, it was your friend's old man what did it." He gritted his teeth, counted to three, and yanked, gasping, "Bloody Hell, that soddin' hurt!"

Hair forgotten and totally grossed-out, Dawn dumped half a bottle of peroxide, also liberated from the nearby truck plaza store – on his foot, which though painful was better than what Dru would have done in the same situation.

And it had also been a little bit of all right once he dug out the last hooked sandburr before switching the telly over to some old movie channel, the two of them eating junk from the vending machine out in the hall while one or another dead actor gesticulated on the fingerprint smeared screen until sunrise, finding them both asleep.

Luckily news of the wildfire hadn't reached either Buffy or her mother when Spike cautiously dropped Dawn off at the house in yesterday's camping clothes, which had taken two trips through the motel's coin-op washer and dryer plus a helluva lot of Febreeze to be rendered even remotely wearable.

Trouble didn't really start until Joyce got a call from the Scout Council office around lunch time, wanting to let her know that she needed to call the county sheriff's office because Dawn and her older brother, William, had disappeared during the previous night's wildfire…

Only Buffy picked up, not Joyce. ("Fire? Oh my God, what fire?! Her older WHAT?")

Dawn was by then, sleeping it off in her room. This didn't last long.

The story came out that, yes, dad had blown her off - _again_. But she'd reallyreallyREALLY wanted to go camping… And well… ummmm… that guy, you know, ummmm, Spike?"

"Who?"

"He said if I told everybody he was my big brother…"

"Oh. My. God. Oh my _God!_ _MOOOOOOOOOM!_ "

"…(in a very tiny voice, really, really fast) …he'd take me and itwouldbeallrightbecausewe'dalreadyspentthemoney AND ifIdidn'tsayanythingit'dallbeo.k.'K?"

"O.K.? O.K.? Dawn… how could you be so… _moooooooooooooom!"_

...down in the basement of the Magic Box, the eavesdropping Spike pocketed another box or six of expensive imported incense, laughing quietly to himself – the Slayer kicked in the door to his crypt before throwing him around like a ragdoll and hurling his telly out into the cemetery lawn, where it blew up on impact in a rather spectacular manner, broken glass everywhere – now THAT'S entertainment!

Right in the middle of _Passions_ , just when it was gettin' good – bugger.

Still, worth it, worth it!

Alyana never came to help clean up the DeSoto, but a damp pair of Doc Martins all sticky and stained with what suspiciously resembled Skittles with a Barbie head stuffed down into one toe showed up on Joyce's back porch a few nights later. As he'd nicked them from Joey Ramone himself, Spike had spent an afternoon hosing them out to dry on the roof of his crypt. One bottle of neetsfoot oil later, they were almost as good as new even if on hot nights they still gave off the smell of artificial fruit flavoring.

Hank Summers had yet to be waylaid on his way to the crapper, but only because Spike had spent all of his available cash on getting the suspension of the DeSoto repaired and needed a bit of time to come up with an amount of cash large enough to pay for the magnitude of revenge he felt that Dawn's dad deserved.

Joyce received a polite but firm letter from the local Girl Scout Council office informing her that Dawn was welcome at all Girl Scout events but Dawn's older brother, William, was not. Joyce never learned about this because Spike intercepted the notice directly from the Summers mailbox before she or Buffy could read it. He also scored a free sample packet of lavender scented Tide while tampering with the U.S. Mail, but left the sample tampon laying on the Summers front porch where he'd dropped it as if burned– some federal crimes just aren't worth it.

Spike made a point of switching laundry night, which was every Wednesday after sundown at Joyce's house, to Thursday night to avoid further entanglements with any form of Scouting whatsoever, except perhaps, cookies... which is a story best told later.

Speaking of laundry, upon reaching Afghanistan a week later, Ayawamat found a very, very dead opossum in his duffle bag. Nobody had any idea how it got there.

Xander never did figure out why his missing favorite pair of cargo pants smelled like cigarettes and lake water. Or showed up one morning in the middle of the street in front of the Harris residence.

Spike's telly was replaced by something considerably nicer than what Buffy had hurled. Willy's Bar had to replace their suddenly missing one that very same evening.

500 acres of bone dry California desert had been burned to the roots along with Camp Wa-Sha-Shu's boathouse and dock – the girls and their escorts had been airlifted unharmed. A team of biologists from the National Fish and Wildlife Service were scouring the ashes for evidence of two extinct California Grizzlies rumored to have been seen prior to the conflagration. Word was, they were still looking...

"Giles, thanks for being my date! I know you'll have a good time at the dance with me – we'll have red punch and little heart-shaped cookies we bake ourselves!" The thumping was Dawnie, gleefully jumping up and down at having procured yet another unsuspecting victim. "I get to wear heels! I get to wear heels!"

"How very lovely." Giles groused. "I suppose you'll insist that I wear a red tie?"

"Heh, better you than me, me old son!" Spike, duster pockets loaded down with stolen occult boodle, swaggered towards the discreet manhole cover in a corner of the Magic Box's basement and lifted it. Pausing before climbing back down into the sewer, he smirkingly poured an entire $50/ounce bottle of organic honey labeled as having been blessed by the Dalai Llama himself on the pile of spare stakes and other weapons that Buffy stored there, "Oh yeah, old man, better you than me!" before pulling the heavy iron cover shut behind him.

Had anybody been paying attention upstairs, they would have heard the last dying echoes of Spike's laughter and a whiff of mentholated cigarette smoke coming up at them through the drainpipe hole of the "employees only" lavatory sink.

But they weren't.

So they didn't.


End file.
